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Classic Banana’s Foster dessert at Brennan’s of Houston, a top donor restaurant for Houston Restaurant Weeks.<\/p>\n
Brennan’s of Houston<\/p>\n
Houston Restaurant Weeks<\/a> will launch Aug. 1, setting off 38 days of deals at restaurants across the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n The event is both the biggest annual fundraiser for the Houston Food Bank and a major booster for many local restaurants, for whom August is traditionally the slowest month of the year. Participating restaurants offer multi-course, set-menu meals, and donate a portion of the proceeds from each sale.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Houston Restaurant Weeks starts soon. Here’s where the Chronicle food team recommends eating.<\/a><\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Recently, however, the restaurant industry has been hard-hit by a barrage of problems<\/a>: People are eating out less. Some of them drink less. Food costs went up. Hiring became harder. And it\u2019s often a struggle for restaurants to create a menu that brings in enough money for them to make a profit and make a donation, while still offering a bargain to diners.<\/p>\n So in an attempt to support them, HRW changed its donation structure last year. It will maintain the changes for 2026.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a look at what changed and how it\u2019s impacted restaurants.<\/p>\n Why make the change?<\/p>\n During HRW, restaurants agree to offer set-price meals for $25, $39 or $55. Historically, for each meal sold, they would donate $3, $5 or $7 to the food bank, depending on the cost of the meal.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Last year, though, the restaurant industry in Houston faced a crisis. Restaurants all over the city were closing down.<\/p>\n So HRW changed its expected donation. Instead of requesting $3, $5 or $7 per meal, it asked for $1, $3 or $5.<\/p>\n \u201cThat $3 and $5 and $7 donation structure just wasn’t fitting for the time that we’re in,\u201d said Katie Stone, who leads HRW as president of the Cleverley Stone Foundation. \u201cWhen we changed it last year, we kind of had the feeling that this is where we’re going to be for a few years.\u201d<\/p>\n SEE THE LIST: Houston Restaurant Weeks returns in August with 200+ restaurant<\/a>s<\/p>\n She said HRW also removed the minimum requirement that restaurants sell at least 200 of each meal special they offered, or else donate an amount equivalent to what they would have raised if they sold 200. (For instance, under the previous system, a restaurant that offered a $55 dinner deal and a $25 lunch would have had to give at least $2,000. That’s the old $7 donation for dinner and $3 for lunch, times 200 meals each.)<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n At the same time, Stone added an additional $1,000 for restaurants to donate as a guarantee up front, to mitigate the issue of chasing down restaurants for their donations after\u00a0HRW. This does not count toward restaurants’ per-meal donation later, she said.<\/p>\n But Stone also said\u00a0she manually adjusted the overall donation amounts for about 40 small restaurants\u00a0to ensure that the new structure wouldn’t mean they had to donate more\u00a0per customer.<\/p>\n “This is not a fee,” she said. “This is just us trying to hedge a little bit to not collect all the money at the end of the event.”<\/p>\n How did it affect donation amounts?<\/p>\n In 2024, HRW brought in about $2,010,000. Last year, it raised $1,650,000, an 18% decrease.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Still, the fundraiser significantly outperformed Stone\u2019s expectations, she said. \u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s because customers helped to make up for the lowered per-meal donation with a swelling in the number of orders. Approximately 26% more people ordered dinners through Houston Restaurant Weeks last year than in 2024, Stone said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt worked so well for us that we are definitely going to stick with it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was definitely the right decision for us to make.\u201d<\/p>\n Julie Voss, chief development officer at the Houston Food Bank, said she\u2019d initially been nervous about the change, especially after the food bank faced an $11 million cut<\/a> in federal funding. In the end, though, the 2025 donation beat her expectations, and she said the difference fell within a margin she was happy with.<\/p>\n What do restaurants say?<\/p>\n Even for an institution like Brennan\u2019s of Houston, proprietor Alex Brennan-Martin said the years since the COVID-19 pandemic have been rough. The challenges, he said, came to a head in 2025.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n So lowering the expected donation offered a measure of relief.<\/p>\n \u201cI know that was a huge help to restaurants. It certainly helped us,\u201d he said. \u201cTo get an extra couple dollars, an extra dollar here, an extra dollar there \u2014 that reduced the donation, to be sure, to the food bank, but it’s helped keep the golden goose alive.\u201d<\/p>\n The majority of Brennan\u2019s customers in August, he said, order the HRW menu. That makes the Southern restaurant into a powerhouse donor,\u00a0HRW\u2019s second-biggest in recent years. In 2024, it donated $48,000, and in 2025, $26,000, according to numbers that HRW released about its top donations.<\/p>\n